Westhost Review

Born in 1988 (which makes them a dot-com veteran), Westhost is one of the oldest hosting companies and has been providing its customers with a secure hosting environment at affordable prices all over the world. The company has won many industry awards and has been known for its excellent customer support and using the best available technology. The company, founded by Chris Russell was merged with the UK2 group in 2008. The group is made up of numerous brands, some of which are top hosting brands such as Midphase.

Headquartered in Providence, Utah, Westhost hosting is for bloggers, designers, small businesses and startups and offers much more. It provides WordPress, managed, web and email hosting, domains, SSD VPS, dedicated servers, networking, systems administration, an online store builder, website building and many other services. It has over 1 million domain names under its belt and claims that they are all about empowering their customers to succeed.

Westhost already had multiple data centers and have largely benefited from them being a part of the UK2 group as that has allowed them to expand their hosting operations internationally across Singapore, Amsterdam, Singapore, London and other cities in the United States. In this Westhost review, we will look at some key features of the host such as customer support, uptime, pricing plans and so on.

Customer Support

Westhost claims that they give high priority to customer support. It does not matter whether your question is about the daily management of your account or something acutely technical, the customer executives at Westhost have your back. Apart from a great 24/7 customer support team at your disposal, they also have an extensive knowledge base or you can email the technical team.

Knowledge Base

Westhost offers an impressive knowledge base that offers helpful guides and tutorials that their customers will appreciate. The knowledgebase is divided into many sections such as billing and accounts management, applications, hosting, DNS, security, cPanel and other topics. They also have a very extensive FAQ sections that a lot of other companies can only dream of. Most of these topics are covered in detail and are often linked to other informative articles.

If the customers want more information, they can always head to the Westhost blog which has some great content.

Live Chat/Email/Telephone

If you are unable to find a solution in the knowledge base, you can head over to their live chat where you will be required to log in using your email and username and select the department your query involves. The customer representatives are well informed and well equipped to tackle any of your problems. There is no question of any language barrier and the representatives are able to understand your queries correctly and precisely. Rest assured that your queries will be solved professionally.

The response time for email queries may vary, depending on the time of the day or the week, and is likely to be slower on weekends or non-business days. If you look at other Westhost reviews, you will find that their response time may swing between anything from 1 to 24 hours, so that is definitely not a standard by which we can gauge their customer service. Ditto goes for the ticket system.

Westhost also displays a telephone number on their website (1.800.222.2165) if you are unable to find the answers to your queries via chat or email.

Uptime

On their about us page, Westhost promises to provide their customers with optimal uptime and say that their systems infrastructure would be maintained, constructed and monitored to ensure 99.9% uptime. This holds true for the various customer reviews we came across, which showed that their servers were running constantly without many interruptions.

Their servers are monitored 24/7 with the help of trained and skilled technicians who are capable to tackle any kind of interruptions that could affect your site’s performance. They include free backups if you are a hosting customer, and if you are a customer that uses their dedicated servers, you would receive credits in case there is an outage. In fact, you can check the real-time information on the status of their servers here.

Key Features

Let's look at some of the key features of West Host:

Site Builder

This is a tool to help you design beautiful websites that will look great on any platform, be it mobile devices or desktop computers. It features 165 fully-customizable templates that you can replace with your content and publish as your own. It has a drag-and-drop interface, so even a novice can build a fully functioning website in no time!

This is a paid service and you can find out more about the packages here.

One-Click Installs

You can have your website up and running in no time with Westhost’s one-click installs of the most popular software such as Joomla, WordPress, phpBB, Magento, Drupal, Zen Cart, Vanilla and many more.

30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Westhost guarantees you 30-day money-back guarantee, which means you have plenty of time to test them out.

Experts Available at All Times

Whenever you need help, day or night, you will find experts who can understand you and resolve your issue. They will provide informative answers to your queries in an easy to understand and friendly way.

Pricing Plans

The company offers a ton of plans for a company of its size. It offers dedicated email hosting, Cloudflare, website design and builder and domain names. We will look at pricing plans of the web and managed hosting and dedicated server prices.

Web Hosting

Westhost offers you the best in infrastructure and service and offers you three great plans:

Personal Hosting: If you are just getting started, this is the best economic plan for you. Starting at $1.99 per month (for the first 12 months and then the price is $8 per month), the plan includes 1 website, 50GB disk space, 1000GB bandwidth, unlimited 10GB emails and free set up. You also get a dedicated IP for $2 per month, 100 FTP accounts and 10 domains.

Preferred Hosting: If you have a large or multiple website(s), you will not need to be worried about resources. Starting at $5.20 per month (for the first 12/24/36 months, and then the price is $13 per month), the plan includes unlimited websites, 200GB disk space, 2500GB bandwidth, unlimited 10GB emails and databases, free setup and 1 domain. You also get a dedicated IP for $2 per month, unlimited FTP accounts and domains.

Business Hosting: When your top priority is uptime and performance, this plan is for you. Starting at $6.40 per month (for the first 12/24/36 months, and then the price is $16 per month), the plan includes unlimited websites, disk space, bandwidth, unlimited 10GB emails and databases, free set up, 1 domain 1 dedicated free IP and free SSL certificate. You also get unlimited FTP accounts and domains.

All these packages come equipped with Ruby on Rails, PHP 7.0, MariaDB, Perl, PHPMyAdmin, SEO tools, SSH access and Linux OS. They also have Webalizer, AWStats, GUI file manager, Softaculous and video tutorials. What’s commendable is that this page offers a lot of information and helps you decide if you are confused about which package you should go for.

As of now, Westhost is offering $75 off on shared hosting.

Managed Hosting

Let your server management stress out of the window and let server support experts handle it. They will keep your software up to date, handle support queries and keep your data safe. It offers 3 plans:

All the plans come with 99.9% SLA uptime guarantee, free cPanel and SSL, unlimited inbound traffic, automated security scan, assisted start up and many more features.

Dedicated Servers

To take full control of your hosting, you have the option of dedicated servers, where you can control an entire server and your storage capacity and bandwidth remains untouched. Westhost has 3 plans for you:

D2: For $122.87 a month, this plan is ideal for business infrastructure and more. You get Intel Xeon E3-1231 v3 server, a choice of 4 or 8 cores, 2x1TB SATA HDD, 10TB bandwidth, a speed of 3.4GHz, 8GB DDR3 RAM (maximum upgradable to 32GB), IPMI and root/admin access, biometric access control, UPS battery backup and much more.

D5: For $246.82 a month, you get Intel Xeon E5-2620 v2 server, 2×6 (12) cores, 2x4TB SATA HDD, 100TB bandwidth, a speed of 2×2.1GHz, 32GB DDR3 RAM, IPMI and root/admin access, biometric access control, UPS battery backup and much more. This plan is currently unavailable but shall be available soon.

You can have add-ons such as cPanel, Windows OS, extra RAM and HD for special prices.

Security Features

Westhost is serious about the security they provide and have a page dedicated to it where they maintain post about DMCA, DDoS, SSL and so on. It also offers these features:

SiteLock

You need your website to be secure while keeping it public and SiteLock’s malware protection does exactly that. The service automatically searches and removes malware, making sure that your website does not get blacklisted by Google and blocks all backdoor entry attempts. It also starts working automatically once enabled and does not require any technical knowledge from you.

This is a paid service and you can find out more about the packages here.

Cloudflare

This service not only enhances your level of security but also speeds up your site’s performance. Westhost offers free services that include automatic content caching, IPv6 compatibility and reputation-based threat protection. It also offers a paid version of the service ($12.99 a month) which includes SSL support, quick analytics updates among other features.

Two-Factor Authentication

While accessing your Westhost account, this verification process provides an extra layer of security. Read more about this process in detail here.

Pros and Cons

As any company out there, there are good and bad things about each of them so let's see what Westhost has to offer:

Pros:

Westhost offers plenty of bandwidth even on the lower plans so that you will not be falling short of it easily.

9% server uptime is impressive and consistent.

Excellent customer service and not limited to just one method; there is live chat, email support and you can even phone in.

Knowledgeable and friendly support staff that takes care of all your queries.

30-day money back guarantee, which is standard practice by hosting providers.

Both managed and unmanaged servers on offer.

Server uptime and speed are comparable with that of the competitors.

Hosting plans are competitively priced and intuitive.

Cons:

Services and features for the unmanaged dedicated servers come at a high price.

The extras and add-ons offered by Westhost are more expensive when you compare them with the competitors.

Conclusion

The company offers its customers many great features and services for a low price and provides reliable customer support. The fact that they also boast over a million domains cannot be ignored either. Besides, Westhost has been in the business long enough to realize what the customers want and strive to fulfill those expectations. Overall, they provide a pleasant and competitive hosting environment. We hope our Westhost hosting review will help you make up your mind about whether they’re the right fit for you.